Rising early we left our Athens Penthouse apartment heading for the airport. Needing to be there 3 hours in advance has always seemed ludicrous to us but this time it definitely paid off.
Catching the metro to Piraeus from Kalithea was a challenge well managed this time and our 5 day tickets worked well on our 6th day thanks to a very obliging lady who was cleaning the ticket booths. Hearing an ominous klaxon as we tried to pass through the gate she took our tickets and activated the gate manually from the opposite side. We shall forever be in her debt.
Catching the X96 from Pireas directly to the airport was also a breeze....buying the tickets was a little drawn out but once Papa (the shop owner) started hurtling abuse at his staff they woke up and produced tickets instantly....lol.
Our destination was Goa India - via Istanbul and New Dehli - and we had bought our visas before we left NZ so everything should have been in order.....sadly it was not!
We were the first in the queue for once at check in and that was where we remained for the next hour at least whilst several people decided whether we could enter India or not. We had our visas, we had paid for our visas, we had confirmation of our visas, we thought we had printed out our visas but embedded in the confirmation email was the actual document itself that we hadn't printed!!!!!! (If travelling to India be warned, you need this important document) Finally and thankfully a "tech savvy check-in guy" came to help...found the embedded documents on our cell phones, saved them to a PDF, emailed them to an office a few metres away who printed them out for us both. We collected them, had our passports and boarding cards returned to us and after a lot of worry and stress we were good to go. We shall forever be in that young man's debt too!!!! We were also grateful we had chosen to save the emails on our phones.
It was a great flight to Goa with Air India and we were looking forward to our 2 week stay in a hotel with, at last, a swimming pool. (This was free of charge for us as we had won the trip in Vietnam the previous year.) The Karma Royal Palms hotel sent a car to pick us up and we arrived to great welcomes......Betty and her staff were absolutely lovely.
The hotel was situated in a very small country village a short walk from Benilaum Beach but what we were not prepared for was the rain!!!! After the first couple of days...every day it poured sometimes non stop. Monsoon season certainly lived up to its name.
After a couple of nights we were upgraded to a 2 bedroom villa which was awesome and the hotel and its staff couldn't do enough for us....if the weather had been different it would have been perfect. The Goan food was amazing in the hotel restaurant as were their cocktails at the bar.
I think on two occasions we managed to walk to the beach and had lunch overlooking the stormy seas at Johncy's restaurant (their Marsala potatoes are out of this world) and one day we took a tuk tuk to the markets in Margoa where Gary bought a shirt.
Unfortunately though our experience of Goa was spoiled by all the torrential rain, flooding in the village and resort which also heralded frequent power cuts and wifi drop outs. Added to the above we were enduring unprecedented stress from home and ultimately we became two very sick units. Goa does not leave a great memory for us to share unfortunately but mainly due to circumstances outside our control.
We did however meet some amazing people there though.....Neelu and Jessica thankyou for the lighthearted banter and a day of fun times....Think you met your match in one-eyed Gary...... eh Jessica? Thanks also to all the staff at Royal Palms Hotel who made our stay as comfortable as was possible.
Our next stop is Faridabad...just outside of New Dehli where we plan to meet up with two beautiful families we met in Ao Nang last year. Really looking forward to that one and hopefully no rain!!!!!
Catching the metro to Piraeus from Kalithea was a challenge well managed this time and our 5 day tickets worked well on our 6th day thanks to a very obliging lady who was cleaning the ticket booths. Hearing an ominous klaxon as we tried to pass through the gate she took our tickets and activated the gate manually from the opposite side. We shall forever be in her debt.
Catching the X96 from Pireas directly to the airport was also a breeze....buying the tickets was a little drawn out but once Papa (the shop owner) started hurtling abuse at his staff they woke up and produced tickets instantly....lol.
Our destination was Goa India - via Istanbul and New Dehli - and we had bought our visas before we left NZ so everything should have been in order.....sadly it was not!
We were the first in the queue for once at check in and that was where we remained for the next hour at least whilst several people decided whether we could enter India or not. We had our visas, we had paid for our visas, we had confirmation of our visas, we thought we had printed out our visas but embedded in the confirmation email was the actual document itself that we hadn't printed!!!!!! (If travelling to India be warned, you need this important document) Finally and thankfully a "tech savvy check-in guy" came to help...found the embedded documents on our cell phones, saved them to a PDF, emailed them to an office a few metres away who printed them out for us both. We collected them, had our passports and boarding cards returned to us and after a lot of worry and stress we were good to go. We shall forever be in that young man's debt too!!!! We were also grateful we had chosen to save the emails on our phones.
It was a great flight to Goa with Air India and we were looking forward to our 2 week stay in a hotel with, at last, a swimming pool. (This was free of charge for us as we had won the trip in Vietnam the previous year.) The Karma Royal Palms hotel sent a car to pick us up and we arrived to great welcomes......Betty and her staff were absolutely lovely.
After a couple of nights we were upgraded to a 2 bedroom villa which was awesome and the hotel and its staff couldn't do enough for us....if the weather had been different it would have been perfect. The Goan food was amazing in the hotel restaurant as were their cocktails at the bar.
I think on two occasions we managed to walk to the beach and had lunch overlooking the stormy seas at Johncy's restaurant (their Marsala potatoes are out of this world) and one day we took a tuk tuk to the markets in Margoa where Gary bought a shirt.
We did however meet some amazing people there though.....Neelu and Jessica thankyou for the lighthearted banter and a day of fun times....Think you met your match in one-eyed Gary...... eh Jessica? Thanks also to all the staff at Royal Palms Hotel who made our stay as comfortable as was possible.
Fancy trying to use a five day ticket on the sixth day. I ask you! But on the positive side, if you'd tried to fly to India from London today you wouldn't have got there at all. BA pilots are on strike. Apparently £175,000 a year plus bonuses and perks isn't enough for them! And we've got Boris. Go for monsoons any day!
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